Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Militants suspected to be members of the dreaded Boko-haram sect have burned down houses, including tthe family house of new army Chief of staff Tukur Buratai in Buratai, his village in Borno state.

At least two people were killed and eight injured in the attack, resident Adamu Talba and the military source told Reuters. Buratai was however not present at the time of the attack in the early hours of Wednesday.

Buratai, since he took over last week has vowed to come down hard on the terrorist sect recently changing the code name of the army operations in the north-east from ‘Operation Zaman Lafiya’ to ‘Operation Zaman Lafiya Dole’, vowing that he would make Boko Haram beg for peace.

President Muhammadu Buhari has also vowed to end the insurgency, discussing how to tackle it during his first trip to Washington to meet President Barack Obama.

Controversial Pastor Penuel of End time ministries, South Africa has changed gear.From snakes and stomps, he is now ordering his congregation to undress and eat their cloths including their underwear, and then he proceeds to ride them like donkeys.

President Muhammadu Buhari Tuesday in the United States vowed that his administration would trace the accounts of individuals who stashed away ill-gotten oil money, freeze and recover the loot and prosecute the culprits.

Reacting to questions from members of Nigerians In Diaspora Organisation (NIDO) in the United States and Canada at the Nigerian Embassy in Washington DC on the third day of his visit, the President lamented that “Corruption in Nigeria has virtually developed into a culture where honest people are abused.”According to him,

“250,000 barrels per day of Nigerian crude are being stolen and people sell and put the money into individual accounts,” adding that the United States and other developed countries “are helping us to trace such accounts now. We will ask that such accounts be frozen and prosecute the persons. The amount involved is mind-boggling. Some former ministers were selling about one million barrels per day. I assure you that we will trace and repatriate such money and use the documents to prosecute them. A lot of damage has been done to the integrity of Nigeria with individuals and institutions already compromised.”

Citing the example of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), President Buhari said unlike what obtained during his tenure as Federal Commissioner for Petroleum under military regime when the NNPC had only two traceable accounts before paying oil proceeds into the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), “now everybody is doing anyhow.” The President, who expressed skepticism on the existence of oil subsidy, said if subsidy was removed, transport, housing and food prices would go out of control and the average worker would suffer untold hardship.While agreeing that the “economy is in an extremely bad shape,” following 16 years of bad government by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which ran down the oil refineries and had the “treasury in their pockets,” he said the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led administration would fulfill its three-pronged campaign manifesto of providing security, turning around the economy with a major focus on youth employment and fighting corruption. According to him, agriculture and mining would receive priority attention as faster job-creation avenues for the teeming unemployed youth, adding that some foreign investors had agreed to take advantage of the immense business opportunities in Nigeria.

President Jonathan when asked if the Federal Government (FG) would agree to negotiate with the Boko Haram insurgent and terrorist organization to pave way for the release of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls, replied that the FG would only negotiate if genuine and confirmed leaders of the militant sect came forward and convinced the FG of the current conditions of the girls, their location and the sect’s willingness to negotiate. “Our objective is that we want the girls back, alive and returned to their families and rehabilitated. We are working with neighbouring countries if they will help,” he said.

On when he would form his cabinet, the President, who observed jokingly that the question was chasing him around the world even to the point that at home he had been nicknamed, “Baba Go Slow!”, noted that not even the PDP during all the years it ruled the country ever never formed a cabinet within the first four months. “I am going to go slow and steady,” he assured, as he called for patience to allow the new administration “put some sense into governance and deal with corruption.”President Buhari promised that his administration would at the right time tap into the enormous talents available amongst members of NIDO especially as consultants while their requests for voting right in 2019, a Diaspora Commission and opening of new consulates in parts of the United States and Canada would be looked into.

The President had earlier met at the same venue with a group of young professionals in the United States and assured them of his government’s resolve to fight corruption, remain steadfast and invest heavily in education which he said was the answer to taking the youth out of poverty and ignorance. The youth in their huge numbers took turns to express their best wishes for the President and the country.GARBA SHEHUSenior Special Assistant to the President(Media & Publicity)July 22, 2015

A 35-year-old gospel musician, Olalekan Opaleye, has been arrested for allegedly defrauding a pensioner, Mr. Michael Shote, of the sum of N40m under false pretences.

Shote, who retired from a telecommunication company in London, and the suspect were said to have known each other two years ago, when the former reportedly told him to quit driving and promised to sponsor his musical career.

Apparently, the 75-year-old pensioner financed a record produced by Opaleye, who lived in an Ikorodu building owned by the pensioner.

It happened in July 2013, when Opaleye approached Shote, saying former Senate President David Mark, allegedly wanted to give a contract to his friend to supply 20,000 laptops and freezers, among others, to the National Assembly.

He was said to have persuaded the businessman to invest in the deal and reportedly collected the sum in bits between July 2013 and April 2015 on the pretext that he wanted to use it to facilitate the contract.

The scam wore thin when in April 2015, the complainant insisted on seeing the documents backing the contract, which the suspect could not produce. Opaleye was arrested after the alleged fraud was reported at the state police command.

Shote, a resident of Irepedun Street, in the Sangisha area of the state, said he fell for suspect’s scam because he wanted to assist him.

He said, “I knew him in 2013 through my sister, who he worked for as a driver. He complained to me that he was unfairly treated. I told him to leave the job. He took me to his parents in Mushin and when I saw their situation, I decided to assist him.

“I gave him my apartment in Ikorodu to live. He told me he sings gospel music and needed a financier. I spent about N5m on his record.

“In July, 2013, he said he met a secondary school friend who brought the contract. Because of the trust I had in him, I decided to facilitate the contract with my money.

“At a point, my friends told me that the contract was a fraud, but I did not believe them until I asked him to bring the documents in respect of the contract, but he could not provide them.

“I have lived in London for 50 years. That is where my family is and that is where I worked for decades until my retirement. I only come home to assist people.”

Opaleye was arraigned before an Ikeja Magistrate’s Court on three counts of fraud and stealing.

The Goodluck Jonathan years marked the lowest ebb in our relations. In 2013 the Americans, partly for strategic reasons and partly on account of their own shale oil, took a unilateral decision to stop buying Nigerian oil while Saudi Arabia, with the same light crude as ours, continues to sell millions of barrels in the US market.

When the eminent American political scientist James Coleman was about to embark on his doctoral work at Harvard in the 1950s, he sought advice from his tutor Rupert Emerson. A general in that field, Emerson counselled the young graduate student to focus on Nigeria. He prophesied that Nigeria is destined to be the most important country in Africa and a world power in the future. Coleman’s mammoth doctoral dissertation was later published as, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (University of California Press, 1963). It is widely regarded as one of the classic works of political science scholarship.

President Muhammadu Buhari was in Washington on Monday July 20 and met with Barack Obama and his deputy Joe Biden. Nigeria and America have had a long and complicated relationship over the decades. We are purported friends and partners. But we are also rivals on the African continent, if truth be told.

Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa made the first ever state visit by a Nigerian leader in July 1961. He and President John Fitzgerald Kennedy seemed to have gotten along rather well. With the discovery of oil in Nigeria, our commercial relations with America continued to grow from strength to strength. The political crisis that led to the assassination of Balewa and his political colleagues brought the army into the political arena. Our country was soon plunged into civil war. The United States, Britain and the defunct USSR all joined hands in supporting the Gowon administration to save our union. During the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, when the Arabs imposed a unilateral oil boycott on the United States, Nigeria was the sole Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) member to continue supplying the Americans with petroleum. And this on generous terms.

With the intensification of the liberation struggle in Southern Africa, Nigeria became the leader of the “frontline nations”. The famous speech by General Murtala Mohammed at the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Summit in Addis Ababa in January 1976 changed the course of history. We not only called the bluff of Henry Kissinger, we swayed Africa decisively in favour of the progressive forces of liberation. I would date the roots of the “misunderstanding” between our two nations from that epoch.

Murtala Ramat Mohammed was rewarded for his patriotism with an assassin’s bullet. General Olusegun Obasanjo succeeded him from 1976 until his historic hand-over to the democratically elected government of Shehu Shagari in 1979. During the second military interregnum, General Muhammadu Buhari emerged as the head of the High Magistracy from December 1983 until his unceremonial overthrow in August 1985 by the most retrograde drug-baronish forces in Nigerian history. The years 1985 to 1999 witnessed the descent of our country into the status of a corrupt banana republic. The only area where we scored some good points was in the area of regional peacekeeping in the war-torn countries of Liberia and Sierra. Even on that issue, America was not very comfortable. Our repositioning as a country that could call the ultimate shots in military terms on the continent did not sit well with strategic planners in the Pentagon.

Strangely enough, for more than a decade, US policy think tanks have been releasing studies prophesying that Nigeria would disintegrate in 2015. Nefarious shadowy foreign vultures did their damnedest to foment unrest in the Niger Delta to ensure the eventual disintegration of our country. They failed woefully. This House Has Fallen, they said. They created the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) as an instrument for fast and effective military action to ostensibly pre-empt the consequences of state collapse in countries such as ours. Washington was incensed when Nigeria rebuffed AFRICOM and ensured they never had a base in West Africa.

The Goodluck Jonathan years marked the lowest ebb in our relations. In 2013 the Americans, partly for strategic reasons and partly on account of their own shale oil, took a unilateral decision to stop buying Nigerian oil while Saudi Arabia, with the same light crude as ours, continues to sell millions of barrels in the US market. America had accounted for a quarter of our total oil exports. Today, it is zero. Our trade balance with America has plummeted from a surplus of $28 billion in 2011 to a deficit of $3 billion in 2014.

It is a well-known fact that America relates to our country purely on the basis of a naked power calculus and barely concealed contempt. I have been a diligent student of what the Germans call the machstaat. A rising continental power like ours will never be loved by those who regard themselves as the masters of the universe, for whom our beloved Africa has been a backyard and imperial playing field for the better part of a millennium. “Delenda est Carthago”, as the Roman nobleman and Senator used to proclaim! Throughout Europe and the West where my feet have taken me, I have sensed nothing but schadenfreude towards Nigeria and our Boko Haram predicament. Somebody somewhere wants to bring our great country to its knees. It is a conspiracy of global proportions.

A recent BBC world opinion poll found that 69 percent of Nigerians approve of the United States and its policies. Nigerians – this writer included – feel nothing but love and goodwill towards America. But I doubt if the sentiments are mutual. Lest we forget: President Jimmy Carter was and is, a good friend of Nigeria; so have been Bill Clinton and the younger Bush. It is an irony of history that the first Black President, whose election was celebrated with wild euphoria throughout our benighted continent, may go down in history as the worst as far as we are concerned.

Apart from his whirlwind visits to Ghana and Tanzania where he doled out patronising lectures on “good governance” and “democracy”, Africa has benefitted little from Obama’s presidency. The paltry $3 billion he announced to support his Africa Power Initiative is less than what Israel receives annually. The Obama era has coincided with the emergence of Ebola in West Africa, state collapse in Libya and the Sahel, and Boko Haram in Nigeria. He has put the power of his exalted office behind the ignoble gospel of sodomy and same-sex marriage; an affront to African spirituality and the sacred values of civilisation as handed down to us by our venerable ancestors. In America, racism has increased and black people are being killed by police and bombed in churches as never before. Obama may have saved American capitalism, but his impact on Africa and the black race has been altogether negative.

From the revelations in the infamous Wikileaks, we would be fools to regard America as a friend. They have been training hordes of mercenaries in military camps in some of our neighbouring countries for whatever purposes. Some of the weapons being used by Boko Haram are American in provenance. Instead of helping, America has been complaining of alleged human rights abuses by the Nigerian army. Some of their most eminent scholars have resorted to Jesuitical casuistry in regard to classification of Boko Haram as a terrorist organisation, an evil band of murderers that have killed more than 20,000 of our people – more than the Taliban, al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State ever have done in their despicable careers.

When our man in Washington, Ade Adefuye, lamented that we have been “abandoned” by America, he became a de facto diplomatic pariah in Washington. White House Protocol are insisting that they do not want Ambassador Adefuye in attendance during Buhari’s visit. I knew Adefuye from the time he was Deputy High Commissioner in London to his time as Senior Political Adviser to Secretary-General Emeka Anyaoku at the Commonwealth Secretariat. He is indubitably one of our brightest and best – a gentleman, scholar and diplomat of distinction. The response to his mild-mannered lament says much about America in the age of Obama.